


Fathers' day

by Enid_Black



Series: Nature and Nurture AU [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Father's Day, Fluff, M/M, Parent!Mystrade, Parent!lock, The fluffiest fluff ever, Tooth Rotting Fluff, beware diabetes!, fluffy fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-21
Updated: 2015-03-21
Packaged: 2018-03-18 19:58:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3581997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enid_Black/pseuds/Enid_Black
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oliver, Emma, Margaret and Kathrine celebrate Father's day in their way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fathers' day

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Nature and Nurture](https://archiveofourown.org/works/729134) by [earlgreytea68](https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlgreytea68/pseuds/earlgreytea68). 



> Ok, I know that Father's day isn't until June in UK, but here in Italy where I live it's March 19th. I was thinking a lot to my dad (whom I love very much, I'm lucky enough to have wonderful parents) and this came out. There are no dates, so it's good for every Father's day in the world :D.
> 
> Thanks, as usual, to my beta NepturnalHarianne :D

_Father’s day - Oliver_

Oliver was 4 years old and he didn’t sleep in the small bed anymore: he was a big boy, thus he slept in his big-boy bed. He had even learnt to go downstairs without help, even though that was usually forbidden, papa had even put a fence at the top of the stairs so that he wouldn’t fall. What papa didn’t know (probably daddy did, though) was that Oliver had learnt how to disengage the lock and open the gate soon enough. He didn’t do it often, but today… oh, today it was a good day to be discovered, he thought. He took the two cards he had prepared with Maggie’s help (who had helped Kath with theirs, and Emma too), and started climbing down the stairs in the direction of his parents’ room. It was early morning, early enough that even daddy would be in bed. 

He clutched the banister with his right hand, holding on very tight, and kept the cards in his left. He glanced at the stairs for a few seconds. Usually he would use both hands on the banister to climb down, but the cards would get ruined. It wouldn’t do. So he sat down, put the cards on the step below and stretched his legs to get to the step below that one. He planted his feet on the carpeted surface as firmly as he could and then he slid down with his bum and sat again. Satisfied that the manoeuvre made him feel secure enough and didn’t make too much noise, he kept it up until he reached the landing. Put the cards on the step, stretch the legs, slide the bum, sit again. Repeat. When he arrived in the sitting room, he grinned to himself. Oliver took the cards back in his hands and crossed the kitchen to get to the master bedroom. The door was slightly ajar, allowing the child to peek inside. Barely a portion of the light coming from outside entered in the room, as the curtains were almost completely drawn, but it was sufficient for him to see the pavement and the two figures interwoven on the bed. Papa was on his back, his head slightly bent towards his right side, the side where a lanky figure with dark curls curled around him. Daddy wasn’t sleeping, though, he had turned his head to look at the door and, seeing Oliver, he was raising a questioning eyebrow. Oliver looked sheepish but Sherlock gestured him to come and Ollie didn’t wait for a second invitation. He scrambled up to the bed, climbing on it (and protesting a bit when daddy picked him up and deposited him on the mattress).

“Well? I see you have decided to reveal the uselessness of the gates your father decided to try to restrain you with.” Sherlock murmured, kissing his son’s curly head. Oliver smiled.

“Happy Father’s day, Daddy.” He said, as a response. 

“Happy what?” Sherlock asked, his eyebrows furrowed a bit. 

John stirred on his side and opened a single eye to watch his husband and his son.  
“Father’s day,” he mumbled groggily. “Don’t tell me you deleted that too.” 

Sherlock looked at him indignant.  
“Of course not,” he said. But he knew it was a petty answer, and the other two seemed to know as well.

Oliver started laughing.  
“Here, daddy, I made you a card so you won’t forget again!” he said. 

Sherlock took the slightly crinkled item from his son’s proffered hand and opened it. There were bees all over the edges, in black and yellow, a favourite animal both of Oliver and Sherlock, with even a bit of glitter on them, and a message, painstakingly written by Ollie but obviously created by a more mature mind. 

Every word of the message was in a different colour, and it said _“Our bodies are but the combination of the elements of those who came before us, and I am happy I came from you! I love you, Daddy!”_ Underneath it, in a bigger handwriting, there was the word “Happy”, and in the row below that one five squares, each with its own chemical element, were laid to form the word “FAtHeR’S”. “Day!” completed the card, written at the bottom in a rather blinding shade of neon green. Sherlock took Oliver in his arms and kissed his head fondly.

“Thank you Ollie… I won’t forget it again with your help, thank you.” He sounded a bit watery, but neither Oliver nor John pointed that out. Oliver hugged his father tightly and then turned to John.

“And this is for you, Papa!” he exclaimed, handing a folded sheet to the doctor.

John smiled and kissed Ollie for good measure. He sat up, propping a pillow behind his back and opened the card.  
On John’s card, the animal of choice was the hedgehog.  
Oliver had told him he resembled one once, when he had his hair a bit longer than usual and it had stuck in spikes, after the three of them had caught the rain while coming back from the park.  
Oliver still laughed about it. 

Under the hedgehogs (pointed cute triangular muzzles with black noses and eyes, the entire body made of spikes of different colours that recalled remarkably one of his most peculiar jumpers, and glitter dusted liberally on it), there was a message for him, too. _“You always protect me with your spikes and you always cuddle me with your smiles. I love you, Papa!”._ John too had to brush away a tear before taking Oliver in his arms and hugging him tight. 

“We love you too, Oliver. We love you so much.” He murmured in his hair. 

The three of them huddled in the bed and Oliver beamed at his parents, chattering away about how he had wanted to write everything by himself and that Maggie had helped him with the difficult words, and that Emma had given him her favourite yellow pencil and Kathrine had brought the glitter and John and Sherlock smiled to him and to each other, looking at their happy boy. 

“So that’s why you came down this morning all sneaky, uh?” Sherlock asked and Oliver nodded with proud air.

“Yes! Well, unlocking the gate wasn’t that difficult,” he started answering, ready to show off in a very Holmesian fashion.

“Hang on,” John interrupted, “You mean he came downstairs all alone? But the gate-”

“The gate is very easy to open for a genius like our Oliver.” Sherlock said, tickling the child, and with an evident trace of pride in his voice. John looked at them, not sure if he should feel proud too, or astonished. When Sherlock released him, Oliver added,

“I wanted to come down the stairs like a big boy!” He said, “but I usually hold on with both hands and I had the cards. So I came down on my bum! It was so fun!” he exclaimed. John passed a hand on his face, groaning.

“You know what? For this once, I’ll let it pass. You were smart to come down on you bum. But,” he added, “don’t do it again. And now you have to face the consequences of your acts!” he growled, roaring like a dinosaur and using his hands as claws while Oliver shrieked and tried, with no avail, to escape. “I will eat your tummy! Grrrrr!” John then uncovered Ollie’s belly and proceeded to give him loose bites and blowing raspberries on it, to the utter joy and laughter of his child, while Sherlock looked at them with an incredulously fond look in his eyes.

**SWH-JWH-OCWH-SWH-JWH-OCWH-SWH-JWH-OCWH-SWH-JWH-OCWH-SWH-JWH-OCWH-SWH-JWH-OCWH-SWH-JWH-OCWH**

 

_Father’s day – Emma_

Emma was up with the first lights of dawn, hoping to catch her father before he headed out for work. She put on her dressing gown, the one decorated with small rabbits jumping on little moons, she took her cards from the drawer she had hid them in, and headed towards her dad’s room.  
It had been more or less three years since she had met Gregory, and a few months since the D.I. had come to live with them, thus becoming a fixed point in her life.  
He often came to take her when she got out from school, he fed her and spent a lot of time with Emma, and daddy was so much more relaxed since Gregory was there.  
She still saw her maternal grandparents every week (and she loved them), but she was so happy to live with her father (she was also happier to see her paternal grandparents way less often, but it was a shared relief with her dad, so she didn’t feel guilty). The door of the room was closed and she peeked in the keyhole (she didn’t want to interrupt them if they were kissing. Even if her daddy became as red as an apple and Gregory sputtered nonsense in those cases and it was funny. It didn’t happen often, though, she had been raised with manners). The two men were still asleep though, each one on his side of the bed, their hands touching between the pillows.  
Emma turned the doorknob, as silently as she could, and slipped inside, threading carefully on the balls of her barefoot feet on the carpeted floor to make as little noise as possible. She climbed on the bed and put the cards beside her, in a slightly concealed position.  
At that point, she felt two pair of eyes on her.  
Daddy was looking at her with a knowing smile on his face and she climbed to him first, hugging him close.

“Good morning Daddy.” She said, her blonde hair still in disarray from the sleep. 

“Good morning sweetheart.” He answered, tenderly kissing her head. 

“Good morning Greg.” She said sweetly and the D.I. caressed her cheek,

“Good morning to you too, Emma.” He answered, smiling despite the hour.

“What brings you here in this dire hour of the day, my dear?” Mycroft asked. Emma smiled, taking the first card and making sure that the other was well concealed from the less observant man in the room.

“I wanted to find you this morning, Daddy. Happy Father’s day.” She said, kissing his cheek and giving him the card. Mycroft kissed his daughter’s head again and took the folded paper with utmost care. 

He opened it and a glittery image of Mycroft armed with an umbrella defending a blonde girl from a Zimwi, the same Zimwi in her mother’s book. Above them, a message carefully written in a penmanship as precise as her father’s. _“To my Daddy, who is always protecting me from all the bad Zimwi and from broccoli. Happy Father’s day, I love you!”_  
Mycroft gave her a beaming smile and an amused laugh.

“My princess.” He said, hugging her tight. Emma squeezed her own arms as tight as possible and released a satisfied sigh in her father’s embrace.  
She turned to Greg to see him watching them tenderly and she smiled brilliantly at him.  
She leaned back and retrieved the other card, silently handing it to Gregory.  
Lestrade’s smile faltered in a surprised expression as he accepted the folded paper, and Emma’s cheek got pinker and she burrowed in her father’s arms. 

“Open it.” She murmured.  
Lestrade didn’t make her repeat herself and sat up on the bed, opening the card in a position where both Emma and Mycroft were able to see it.  
Emma had drawn a triceratops and a grey haired man dressed like a cowboy on it, keeping a blonde girl in front of him while they rode the triceratops itself.  
The message above it said _“You keep me safe from Filch and ride dinosaurs with me.”_  
And then, with a very careful hand, _“May I call you Papa?”._

Lestrade stared at the sheet for several seconds, trying to wrap his head around the question. He raised his eyes towards Emma and Mycroft.  
Myc looked utterly surprised and, to Greg’s now expert eye, delighted by his little girl, his eyes darting from Greg to Emma with alternating expectation and pride.  
Emma was looking at him, gnawing on her bottom lip, and her hands were clutching the comforter tightly. Gregory swallowed and cleared his throat, before looking at Emma straight in the eyes.

“Of course you can call me papa, sweetie.” He said. Emma downright squealed and, freed by her father, launched herself at Gregory, who caught her and kissed her head repeatedly.  
Emma was giggling happily in her step-father’s arms, while Lestrade and Mycroft looked at each other, not even trying to conceal the happiness on their faces.

**MH-GL-EEH-MH-GL-EEH-MH-GL-EEH-MH-GL-EEH-MH-GL-EEH-MH-GL-EEH-MH-GL-EEH-MH-GL-EEH-MH-GL-EEH**

 

_Father’s Day – Margaret and Kathrine_

 

The girls were now used to wake up on Father’s day without their dad home to greet them. It had been sad the first year, but to compensate, they had made up a tradition of having the day for the three of them.  
This year, both Margaret and Kathrine were a bit on edge. They had helped Oliver and Emma with their cards, and they had spoken at length with Emma.  
She had explained that she wanted to start calling their father “papa”, and asked them if it would bother them. Both of them considered Emma as a sister already, having come to love her dearly, and even if they maybe would never start calling Mycroft “papa” (it was too strange for them, they had been too grown-up when they’d first met him, it didn’t sound right), still they called him “Myc” with the same familiarity and affection that Oliver had.  
Summing up, Margaret and Kathrine were dying to know how their father had responded to Emma’s question. Maggie wouldn’t have helped Emma with the card if that hadn’t been a concrete possibility, but still. 

Tara, their mother, saw them on the edge and sighed, smiling. She loved her girls and could recognise that her relationship with their father had only improved since Mycroft and Emma had come in their lives. It had even happened that she had had Emma over once or twice, when both Gregory’s cases and Mycroft’s job didn’t allow for a timely babysitter for the girl, and she had been charmed by the little Holmes, much as it happened with most of the people the girl met.  
So, it was with a smile and a kiss on their foreheads that she left her girls in front of the gate of Mycroft’s home, and watched them enter the mansion. 

Margaret and Kathrine took off at a run towards the entrance, laughing, chattering excitedly and smiling. It was early enough in the morning to have breakfast with their father, and they knew he had taken the day off. They were greeted at the door by the man himself, who gathered them in his arms and squeezed them tightly.

“My girls!” he exclaimed, kissing them on the forehead. 

“Daddy!” they exclaimed, laughing, and Greg ushered them inside, getting their backpacks and leaving them in the foyer.  
By the table, ready for the breakfast to start, Mycroft and Emma were waiting for them too.

“Good morning Myc!” Maggie said, scooping a running Emma in her arms and hugging her too, “Good morning Emma!”  
She lowered the blonde between Kath’s arms, after her sister had similarly greeted Mycroft. They all finally sat at the table, ready to enjoy a rare breakfast all together.  
Maggie and Kath exchanged a meaningful glance and the younger took a card off of her large pockets.

“Dad,” she said with her sweet voice, “This is for you from both Maggie and me. Happy Father’s day.” Lestrade smiled widely at his daughters and thanked them.  
He opened the card and found first a fairly large drawing, made without any doubt by Kathrine, of him, with Maggie, Kath herself, and then there were their mum on a side and Emma and Mycroft on the other. Behind, Sherlock, John, Oliver, Mrs Hudson and Molly were waving at them.  
The other side was a letter, this was surely Maggie’s work.

 _“Dear Dad,_  
_Our life isn’t conventional, by any means. We don’t have a strict routine, we don’t have long summer holidays in a cabin in the woods or by the sea, our family hasn’t really defined limits, as if it were something made of water and not made of stone. It’s the best life we could hope for. We are happy, we always have someone to turn to if we have a problem, a question, a doubt. We are protected but not caged, and trust us when we say that we love it. We know that, in all the difficulties that can exist in life, we will always have you. Our family is large, and sometimes messy, and every time we have to explain it to someone else, we have to take out this diagram we made together because it’s much easier. And for all of this, Kathrine and I want to thank you. So, Happy father’s day, dad, we love you so very much, and we love our whole family._  
Margaret and Kathrine.”  
Gregory pushed the chair away from the table and made room for his girls to come to him, and hugged them once again.

“You’re the best daughters a man could hope for.” He said, voice tight and rough. The embrace slowly ended and both girls kissed their father’s cheeks.  
Grinning widely, Maggie and Kath went back to their places and started on the breakfast. Soon, they all were talking to each other, and Emma called Greg papa more than once, and if Gregory had snuck a glance to his daughters when it first happened, expecting some kind of reaction and remaining surprised when none appeared, and Mycroft had smiled, correctly deducing that the girls had talked about that beforehand, soon the newness of that, too, started to fade back into normalcy. Mycroft grinned at Gregory as both men committed this morning to their memory.  
And if when Mycroft had to leave for work both Maggie and Kath hugged him a bit tighter than usual, and if Emma was included in the Lestrades’ Father’s day celebrations, no one mentioned it because it was not strange, it was natural, and it was so very good.


End file.
